Day 16

I joined OSM back in 2018. Then, there was a movement to use alternatives to Google products. For Google Maps, I found OSM.

Recently, in 2023, I finally started contributing to OSM seriously and continuously. Within around 50 days of contributions, I have already become a member of the OSM foundation and one of the top 10 mappers in India.

I am primarily focusing on:

1. Adding buildings in Bhubaneswar, my birthplace area and
2. Adding roads in Malkangiri, Odisha.

Today is Day 16 of my 100 days of OSM challenge. Let’s see where I will reach at the end of 100 days.

I have corrected alignments of buildings, shore line, roads for the area from Cherry Hill (NW) to Beaulieu (NE) down to Egmont (SE) and to the airport in the SW.

I’ve added some buildings, deleted others. Made corrections to some and added a few swimming pools. Put in a few roads, tracks, driveways and service roads. Most recently a load of solar panels at the energy company along with associated infrastructure. Fixing the St John’s River as best I could was fun. Not my first or longest and there is likely more to go.

I have reached my first goal: To make a baseline realignment for the SW of Grenada. I might give myself a little break and continue up the west coast to finish St George as the South coast it pretty congested and it will be nice to fix the whole district.

This diary is about programming, as my diaries usually are. This diary is about the code, particularly about backend codebase of the HOT Tasking Manager (TM). TL;DR of this diary is: HOT TM code is unmaintainable mess and that will not change. HOT TM developers inherited something they can do nothing about. Please, prove me wrong if you can and end up my frustration.

I will try to find out why Error when trying to split tasks happens, so deep breath and dive.

I suspect backend, so I will omit the note that it could be replicated on chrome browser only. And I will start directly at TasksActionsSplitAPI of backend/api/tasts/actions.py file, because that looks reasonable.

In the first try block I need to find out what is that SplitTaskDTO. I always forgot what “DTO” means. The import line helps and looking into backend/models/dtos/grid_dto.py says it is “DTO used to split a task”. Thanks. But the code looks like the data structure so I merely remember the purpose – just data or alike.

Only the second try left, so let’s see. The comment on the first line says it checks the project exists. I am just curious how it’s implemented, so see backend/services/project_service.py to find out exists method. Side note – I completely misunderstand classes with static methods only. Oh, exists is just Project.exists. How is that implemented? Just curious… See backend/models/postgis/project.py to see that exists is… it looks like a database query. I don’t SQLAlchemy, but note the first database request. I will number them, this one being #1.

We are back at the second try. It looks the main work is done in split_task of backend/services/grid/split_service.py, so see that (static again) method. Well, heh, not funny anymore. But I am not going to give up easily this time. So split_task now.

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“The beauty of a tech journey lies in the shared struggles 🧩”

The quote above is a reminder that success is not a solitary path but a collective triumph over challenges. Everybody struggles 🤷🏽‍♂️. Tech’s greatest minds that we know today didn’t escape the struggle; they transformed it into the foundation of their success story. How about that?

The journey to breaking into the ever-evolving landscape of the tech industry can be challenging and daunting. From the overwhelming available knowledge to the diverse backgrounds that contribute to the beauty of the industry. You may want to grab a cup of coffee if you can, let’s quickly delve into the shared experiences that unites aspiring open source enthusiasts worldwide :)

The Struggle is Real

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It’s wonderful to discover such beautiful and accurate mapping.

I checked my location in the Open Street Map and saw how accurate the buildings were mapped in the vicinity where I live in the province. It gave an accurate sizing of our location, which I found great.

I mentioned in my previous post about why it’s great to meet up with other mappers. One thing that someone suggested I write a diary about is the method I found to be notified about map-worthy changes to one’s local area. It turns out that not everyone has heard of the London Gazette, its role in local law and administrative changes in the UK, and the online services it offers to help discover the changes.

So here’s the Wikipedia page for the Gazette And here’s the website

The core of the publication is the notices. The rules of the road network for residential and even some of the more major roads in an area (pretty much everything that doesn’t constitute the trunk road network) are delegated to local authorities, and the ritual incantation they have to go through to change those rules is to publish notices in the local press and in the London (or Edinburgh or Belfast) Gazette.

In the navigation bar at the top of the page is a Notices menu, which will list all the most recent notices in the UK.

There are filters on the left hand side of this page where you can search for and filter the list to the particular notice type and area you’re interested in. For my local area, for things I might want to add to OSM, I’ve found that the following customisations work best:

• restricting the list to Notice Code 1501

• filtering the location by Local Authority from the drop-down box (in my case, the London Borough of Ealing)

• Hitting the “Update results” button and then changing the sort order to “Latest”.

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I attended my second OpenStreetMap London social today. They happen approximately once every two months, but it’s been a year since my first one. It’s daunting, going to a pub in central London to meet a group of strangers, especially if you’re not the most outgoing person and your expectations are that they won’t be either. So I just wanted to recommend it. When you have a niche interest such as mapping the world for no particular return other than the vague idea that this stuff is really important and will change the world, it’s great to meet a few other people who feel the same way. Whether it consumes all your free time, or is just something you spend 15 minutes doing when you visit a new place, it’s brilliant to get perspectives from other mappers, to hear what motivates others, to see what they are doing with the data you contribute, and get some tips on things you might not have heard about. I can’t remember where I heard about the London meetup, but reminders are usually posted to the talk-gb mailing list, to the weeklyOSM newsletter, and to the OSMCal website, so do check those places out for updates.

I want to share that I received the “State of the Map Asia 2023 Community Champion Awards” on November 17 as recognition for advocating the use of OpenStreetMap and community-building across different groups and regions in the Asia-Pacific region and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusivity within the community.

As a student leader passionate about exploring not just maps, but also the diverse tapestry of communities in the Asia-Pacific, I recognize that my efforts are a work in progress. I aim to continue advocating for OpenStreetMap’s advancement and I am deeply grateful to the State of the Map Asia team, my colleagues, mentors, family, friends, and everyone who has contributed to this remarkable journey.

It is one year since I was elected to OSMF board.

I am recording time spend on some things, including time spend on things resulting from being on OSMF board.

So I can report that since 2022-12-09 it was 355 hours.

It records time spend on what I do as result of being on OSMF board. So it excludes for example time spend on mapping and StreetComplete development. And it includes time on some things that I could complete without being on OSMF board like some attribution-related activities - that I do as result of being on OSMF board.

I feel like I owe the world this, I owe Zimbabwe this, we can’t step into the new year before I share this news with everyone. It was June of this year when I was voted as a New Voting Member. I am grateful for a supportive nominator Kingsley Chika CHUKWU and the HOT family as a whole. I might be the first Voting Member from Zimbabwe and for this I was compelled to share this step with the rest of this family especially.

Getting to be a Voting Member came with proving your worth and making sound suggestions and decisions I am already incorporating or taking part in. I am happy to be recognized to this extent and I promise to stand in for the community, to the community as we build a stronger community. You can read my responses here:

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My experience at Pista ng Mapa 2023, from November 21-23, was an exhilarating adventure as eleven Viscan YouthMappers (VYM) and I delved into a three-day conference at the University of the Philippines Tacloban College. The event seamlessly blended intellectual engagement, skill-building workshops, and a celebration of our dedication to open mapping.

The Summit Hotel in Tacloban City hosted the kick-off, featuring plenary sessions with insightful presentations by Mr. Mikko Tamura of Open Mapping Hub – Asia Pacific and Dr. Alfredo Mahar Francisco Lagmay of UP Resilience Institute. The day concluded with parallel sessions, providing a diverse look into mapping’s facets. The highlight of my Day 1 was presenting our VYM project, ‘Mapping of Fire Hydrants as Baseline Data for Fire Emergency Response in Leyte Province, Philippines.’ This was very memorable for me as this transitioned me from a participant last year at PNM2022 to a speaker this year.

Day 2 immersed us in hands-on workshops led by industry experts, from Geoladies’ Ms. Leigh Lunas’ “When Women Maps” to Action for Economic Reform’s Mr. Mark Aimon Pangan’s insights on Digital Data Collection to BNHR’s Mr. Ben Hur Pintor sharing knowledge about beyond shapefiles and file-based data management and “Getting started with Developing Geospatial Applications” by Mr. Luiz Caezar Ian Panganiban of Ausome Maps. These sessions not only enhanced my mapping skills but also fueled my inspiration for geospatial applications.

Day 3 centered on community connections, with meet-ups led by Mr. Mikko Tamura for the OSM Philippines, Mr. Ben Hur Pintor for the OSGeo, and Ms. Feye Andal for the YouthMappers. The YouthMappers Meet-up allowed us in Viscan Youthmappers to reflect on our achievements, identify challenges, and envision our future aspirations. Moreover, the afternoon featured an immersive field trip through Tacloban City and Palo, Leyte, connecting us with local culture and history.

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Okay then well today it looks like I’ll be beginning my amateur cartography hobby. Oh what fun.

Hello community! Today I joined for the first time a meeting and shared my skills with the guests.

Host: Dara,

Attendees: Brazil, Mahjabin, Ralph, Pete, Arnalie, Nicole, Eden, Hawa, Daniel, Franco

Introduction:

The recent HOT community meeting brought together passionate individuals from various corners of the globe, united by a common goal - humanitarian open mapping. Led by Dara, the meeting featured insightful introductions, icebreaker moments, and shoutouts to commendable efforts within the community. As we reflect on the highlights, it becomes clear that the spirit of collaboration and dedication is alive and thriving in the HOT community.

Icebreaker Moments:

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I am delighted to share that I have received the “State of the Map Asia 2023 Community Champion Awards” as a recognition for advocating the use of OpenStreetMap and community-building across different groups, spaces, and regions in the Asia-Pacific region and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusivity within the community. I am grateful to the SOTM Asia team, my colleagues, mentors, family and friends and everyone who has been part of this amazing journey.

Read the blog on YouthMappers Site

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Hi,

My name is Branko from Microsoft. Microsoft’s involvement with OSM spans several impactful contributions:

• Providing Bing imagery since 2010 for free use in OSM for whole world (and all the drama that comes with it)
• Creating Map builder – intuitive editor for Bing users that want to edit OSM map (and all the drama that comes with it)
• Maintaining iD in the interim period before Martin took over (sorry, no drama here, just plain good old maintainership)
• Released world coverage of AI-mined building footprints and road data as open data

This list is not intended to be PR for Microsoft, and I know this sounds like a corporate cliché, but this list is hopefully showing that Microsoft is really committed to success of OSM. Stuff that we did previously, stuff in that list above, is stuff that we think will benefit the community and improve OSM contributions. And we hope it did! A lot of us recently visited SotM EU 2023 and I hope you saw us all around. That event allowed us to see stuff from a different perspective and to try to think out of the box. So, we thought, what if we pause trying to figure out what is the best way to improve OSM contributions on our own and instead - ask YOU how Microsoft can help!? Yes, YOU, the community, directly here in the diary😊. I know this may sound unconventional, but hey – OSM is also not the most conventional project out there, so we thought this might just be the proper way to gather interesting ideas.

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